AS NIGEL GOODALL publishes his biography of Britain's brightest actor, he reveals the two shocking incidents that could have been the death of the Sherlock star

It seems quite remarkable to think that Benedict Cumberbatch is probably more familiar with near-death experiences than most. Since his early years he has almost died four times, surviving hypothermia, a bomb explosion, dehydration and near-starvation.

When people think of Cumberbatch, however, the only near-death experience likely to come to mind is the one that did not happen; when, as Sherlock Holmes, Benedict fell from the top of St Bartholomew's Hospital in London for the finale in series two of the incredibly successful TV drama.

Probably the most terrifying of his brushes with death was his kidnapping in South Africa while filming the mini-series To The Ends Of The Earth for the BBC in 2005, one of his first major screen roles. Even though he has recounted the harrowing encounter before in varying detail, no matter how he tells the story, the events still sound truly horrifying.

As he remembers it, he was making his way back to the film set with co-stars Denise Black and Theo Landey on a Sunday night after an enjoyable weekend scuba-diving at Sodwana Bay, not far from the area where the real "Captain Phillips" five years later would lose control of his cargo ship to Somali pirates.

Benedict and friends were on a highway near the Mozambique border when the tyre on their car blew out and they pulled over to change it. That was when six armed gunmen emerged from the bush, frisked them and demanded money, drugs and weapons. Their hands were bound with their own shoelaces and they were driven away off the road and out of sight of traffic.

Benedict was pushed into the car on to Denise's lap on the front passenger seat with his face squashed against the windscreen. Due to his awkward position, his back and head hit the windscreen every time the vehicle hit a bump in the ground, leaving him in a great deal of discomfort. His captors stopped the car, dragged him out and put him in the boot.

He remembers hitting his head as he was pushed into the tiny space and as he started to suffer chronic cramps he was worried he might pass out. His only thought at this point was were they going to kill him or take him hostage.

Suddenly the car stopped and he was taken out of the boot and forced to his knees, alongside his friends, in the classic execution position. A duvet was slung over his head to silence what he thought would be the gunshot to end his life.

He remembers trying to reason with them, saying that killing him would not be a good idea because they would then have a dead Briton on their hands to get rid of.

After some time, which probably seemed hours to Benedict but was only minutes, he realised the kidnappers had gone.

That was not his first brush with death. In 1994, when he was 18 and in the final year at Harrow, he was at home in Kensington studying for his A-levels in his bedroom when the whole flat shook from a huge explosion.

The windows shattered, a dust cloud enveloped him and his ears rang.

"I ran through the flat. My mum and dad were saying 'Are you all right?' I said no, I couldn't hear out of one ear."

It was the 1994 terrorist attack on the Israeli Embassy, when a car packed with 30lb of explosives blew up and injured 30 people. All Benedict could remember was a deafening silence, then the terrible sound of glass hitting the earth.

Despite Benedict's own near-death experiences, it seems the boot was on the other foot when we look back at his family history. His great-great-uncle (on his mother Wanda's side) was arrested and charged with stabbing a friend to death in August 1893.

The relative, Henry Ventham, was 14 when he and Frederick Betteridge, another 14-year-old, went blackberry picking down a country lane near their Hampshire village.

The teenagers were said to have had a terrible row, resulting in a fatal knife wound for Frederick, who was found with the blade still lodged in his chest. Henry pleaded not guilty when placed in the dock at Hampshire Assizes in Winchester. He was dramatically cleared on the evidence of a third boy, who said Vantham accidentally ran on to the knife.

Not so dramatic was the time when Benedict was faced with a trauma of a different kind, filming his screen test for Star Trek Into Darkness on Christmas Eve 2011.

Director JJ Abrams was interested in casting Benedict as Khan, the villain of his reboot sequel. The only problem was that he needed a tape as soon as possible but because of the seasonal holiday there was no one available to shoot an audition for him.

Benedict's Flip video camera was not working and he could not get hold of any other recording device so in the end, out of desperation, because he had people knocking at his door two days after Christmas, asking for the tape, he decided his best option would be to shoot it on his iPhone with the help of two friends, so he ended up squatting in their kitchen at about 11pm.

He remembers hitting his head as he was pushed into the tiny space and as he started to suffer chronic cramps he was worried he might pass out

With their two children asleep, his friend's wife balanced herself on two chairs to get the right angle on Benedict's face with desk lamps bouncing light off bits of paper, trying desperately to make it look half-decent. They were determined to get it right because the finished article was going to be sent straight to JJ Abrams's iPad.

Once they had finished filming it, they then had to spend a day and a half compressing it. After all their hard work, when Benedict finally managed to send it, he was told: "JJ is on holiday." He was furious.

That was not the only occasion that auditions had almost gone horribly wrong for him. He almost missed his scheduled meeting with Steven Spielberg for War Horse when he could not find a place near Spielberg's hotel in Mayfair to park his motorbike and he was already running unbelievably late.

On another occasion when he went to meet Swedish director Tomas Alfredson for a role in the remake of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, he was asked what he thought of the script but he had not seen it, let alone read it.

It was the first time that Benedict had attended an audition reading totally unprepared through no fault of his own but what had turned out to be a genuine mix up.

And then there was the day he spent a couple of hours sweating through a dinner jacket while doing stunts in a shabby, overheated Soho office in 2004, just before he headed out to South Africa, at a casting call for a video game version of James Bond that he did not get.

If only they knew then that Benedict would, within a few years, be captivating audiences around the world, and surviving real life dangers like 007 did on the big screen, they might not have turned him down.

Benedict Cumberbatch by Nigel Goodall (Andre Deutsch, £16.99) is published on Thursday June 19. Buy it at expressbooks.co.uk.